Daily Archives: 2016/07/13

Shanghai is a much more international place than Beijing. Many foreigners are on the streets and nobody asks for selfies. Also, communication in English is possible at most places. These made Shanghai a very different place to Beijing or Qingdao.

We started this very hot and humid day by having an early lunch. We went to the Kung Fu Fish Restaurant and ordered a spicy fish, which prepared us for the long walks today.

Next, we took the subway to visit the park from the Expo 2010. It was a bit strange because we left the crowded center with an almost empty subway and passed very new but also very empty subway stations. The park was still in good condition but almost empty of people as well.

The impressive building were still there.

We also went in and walk around in the Mercedes Benz Arena. But there were almost no people in this huge building with restaurants and stores. The other Expo building were turned into a mall.

And the China Pavilion was an art exhibition now.

The exhibition was for free and it was good to see Chinese artworks. Most of the pictures were contemporary but realistic and of very big formats. Unfortunately only the ground floor was accessible.

Afterwards we went back to the center and it started to rain. We took cover in a shopping mall and Meng found a nice restaurant in the 8th floor. Malls are huge in this city and plenty. The restaurant was a pretty fancy one and we ordered a couple of dishes, which were new to me, but all of them were delicious. This was one of them:

Steamed lotus roots, stuffed with rice and marinated in honey. This consistency and taste was just great. We also had sweet pork ribs (really sweet) and mushrooms with cured, smoked pork. And we had a table right at the window with a view over Shanghai’s main street. One of the best dinners so far.

When we were done, the streets were even more crowded.

We went to the river, which was one of the places everybody must have seen when visiting Shanghai. We walked there in a huge crowd of people. The police was even guiding the crowd and this was in the middle of the week.

But it was worth it, even in this weather with very high humidity.

To get this picture we had to wait for a while until we got space at the railing close to the river.

Then we walked back in a queue. The weather here was exhausting and didn’t get much cooler after sunset. Meng had planned only one whole day in Shanghai and this was a very good idea. It is an interesting place but one day is enough to see how it is. Tomorrow, we will move on Hangzhou.